Solitude Quotes - Page 38

• Inspiration comes to us slowly and quietly . prime it with a little solitude.

  Brenda Ueland

  Inspiration, Littles, Prime

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• In solitude a dialogue always arises, because even in solitude there are always two.

  Hannah

  Two, Arise, Dialogue

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• To understand one's world, one must sometimes turn away from it! To serve better, one must briefly hold it at a distance. Where can the necessary solitude be found, the long breathing space in which mind gathers its strength and takes stock of its courage.

  Albert Camus

  Distance, Breathing Space, Long

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• Books are solitudes in which we meet.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Book

  Rebecca Solnit (2013). “The Faraway Nearby”, p.36, Granta Books

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• You have got me walking up and down all day under those trees, saying to me over and over again, "Solitude, solitude." And You have turned around and thrown the world in my lap. You have told me, "Leave all things and follow me," and then You have tied half of New York to my foot like a ball and chain. You have got me kneeling behind that pillar with my mind making a noise like a bank. Is that contemplation?

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, New York, Feet

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.484, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Imagination is strong in a man when that particular function of the brain which enables him to observe is roused to activity without any necessary excitement of the sense. Accordingly, we find that imagination is active just in proportion as our sense are not excited by external objects. A long period of solitude, whether in prison or in a sick room; quiet, twilight, darkness-these are the things that promote its activity; and under their influence it comes into play of itself.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Strong, Twilight, Men

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2012). “Collected Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer”, p.247, Simon and Schuster

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• O Holy Spirit of God, abide with us; inspire all our thoughts; pervade our imaginations; suggest all our decisions; order all our doings. Be with us in our silence and in our speech, in our haste and in our leisure, in company and in solitude, in the freshness of the morning and in the weariness of the evening; and give us grace at all times humbly to rejoice in Thy mysterious companionship.

  John Baillie

  Morning, Order, Giving

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• Internally, you experience rowing as a graphic microcosm of life - solitude, learning, work, rest, nourishment, sharing and ultimately challenge.

  Allen Rosenberg

  Challenges, Rowing, Graphic

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• It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, ina government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Ocean, Men, Boys

  Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.208, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The Tao gives birth to One. One gives birth to Two. Two gives birth to Three. Three gives birth to all things. All things have their backs to the female and stand facing the male. When male and female combine, all things achieve harmony. Ordinary men hate solitude. But the Master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe.

  Laozi

  Hate, Men, Two

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• Quiet time and solitude are vital to helping me keep perspective. I consider myself fortunate to have so much quiet built into my profession. I spend long hours by myself at my easel. And while I work, I think-of the future, of my loved ones, of God's goodness and the many exciting opportunities that surround me. I ponder the challenges I face, the needs of others, the direction my life is going.

  Thomas Kinkade

  Opportunity, Thinking, Long

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• The ideal person is he who, in the midst of the greatest silence and solitude, finds the intensest activity, and in the midst of the intensest activity finds the silence and solitude of the desert.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Inspiration, Practice, Silence

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.39, Manonmani Publishers

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• Learn the richness of solitude & quiet. That still small voice is yearning to be heard.

  Susan Jeffers

  Voice, Meditation, Quiet

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• The most important education you get is your own - the one you learn in solitude.

  Erica Jong

  Meditation, Important

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• Settle yourself in solitude, and you will come upon God in yourself.

  Teresa of Avila

  Spiritual, Settling

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• Solitude is the surest nurse of all prurient passions, and a girl in the hurry of preparation, or tumult of gaiety, has neither inclination nor leisure to let tender expressions soften or sink into her heart. The ball, the show, are not the dangerous places: no, 'tis the private friend, the kind consoler, the companion of the easy vacant hour, whose compliance with her opinions can flatter her vanity, and whose conversation can sooth, without ever stretching her mind, that is the lover to be feared: he who buzzes in her ear at court, or at the opera, must be contented to buzz in vain.

  Samuel Johnson

  Girl, Passion, Heart

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1859). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, p.256

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• A man must keep a little back shop where he can be himself without reserve. In solitude alone can he know true freedom.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Freedom, Men, Littles

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• Self Esteem::"It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. I knew a man of simple habits and earnest character who never put out his hands nor opened his lips to court the public, and having survived several rotten reputations of younger men, honor came at last and sat down with him upon his private bench from which he had never stirred."

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Self Esteem, Character, Simple

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• To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude; it is not retreat, but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

  Samuel Johnson

  Pain, Feelings, Retreat

  Rasselas ch. 26 (1759)

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• Not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is for ever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Heart, Men, Clouds

  "Democracy in America". Book by Alexis de Tocqueville, Volume II. Book Two, Chapter II, 1840.

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• Stephen Blackpool fall into the loneliest of lives, the life of solitude among a familiar crowd. The stranger in the land who looks into ten thousand faces for some answering look and never finds it, is in cheering society as compared with him who passes ten averted faces daily, that were once the countenances of friends

  Charles Dickens

  Cheer, Live Life, Fall

  Charles Dickens “Hard Times”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• We need to build downtime into our lives, so that we can have solitude without feeling overcome with guilt.

  Melody Beattie

  Feelings, Guilt, Overcoming

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• After all perhaps the greatness of art lies in the perpetual tension between beauty and pain, the love of men and the madness of creation, unbearable solitude and the exhausting crowd, rejection and consent.

  Albert Camus

  Art, Pain, Lying

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• Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but “steal” some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.

  Albert Camus

  Self, Giving, Quality

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• He was raised by three nurses: freedom, solitude and Mademoiselle. Together, the three of them provided him with an education. From them, he learned everything he believed it was possible to learn.

  Timothee de Fombelle

  Nurse, Together, Three

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